


It's Not Pain, It's Just Uncertainty

by mereypaige



Category: No. 6 - All Media Types
Genre: ...mostly, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Asano Atsuko you depressing SOB, Based more on the novels than on the anime, Canon Compliant, Getting Back Together, Gratuitous bureaucracy, M/M, Mystery, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, POV Alternating, Post-Canon, Rating May Change, Tags May Change, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-08
Updated: 2019-01-06
Packaged: 2019-02-12 03:29:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 9,821
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12950340
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mereypaige/pseuds/mereypaige
Summary: Five years after the Collapse, and Shion is a surveyor for the Bureau of Resource Reclamation in the new NO. 6, trying to escape the lingering shadows of the Restructural Committee. His life is stable. He has colleagues, a home in the new suburb of Artemis, and a state-of-the-art lab at the University. He's finished with waiting for someone who might never return. But on his 21st birthday, Nezumi barrels out of the wasteland and back into his life, and Shion must come to terms with how their relationship has changed. And meanwhile, a troubling discovery in his survey work threatens to overturn all that Shion has worked for, and all that Nezumi has tried to forget...





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ShinoMordio](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShinoMordio/gifts).



> "I know my heart's missing a piece,  
> But it still beats"
> 
> \- "Is", Kanno Youko feat. Pop etc.

Shion wakes before the dawn, shivering from cold, back pressed to the frigid stone wall behind him. Next to him, the left side of the mattress is empty. He sits up, stretches, stands up, stretches again. He washes his face in the cracked porcelain sink, gets dressed in the same clothes he wore yesterday, and retrieves breakfast from his backpack. He does all of this in silence. It is hard to make noise in this room — the weight of years of dust and hundreds upon hundreds of books smother any sound that might find its way down from the world above. Not even mice venture hear any longer. In this crumbling library, Shion is alone.

After he eats, he makes his way slowly, methodically, through the narrow spaces between the bookcases, winding deeper and deeper into the labyrinth of shelves. He knows the exact location of every book, and the name of every title, in this sprawling collection. He knows because once, a lifetime ago, he placed the books here, dutifully organized and categorized and catalogued them, filed them away in neat rows, brought order to this one corner of chaos.

He reaches a shelf deep within the maze of books and casts his eyes along the spines until he finds the book he is searching for. It’s an old paperback, with a fraying cover and yellowing pages, tucked between a volume of sonnets and the thick biography of a playwright. He runs his hand over the cover, fingers catching on the embossed gold lettering of the title, and then he tucks it under his arm and carries it out of the maze and out into the room beyond.

Shion has perfected the art of reading this book over the course of exactly one day. He reads each sentence with precision, every word a beat in a song whose tempo he controls. He begins the book at dawn and finishes it as the last of the light that squeezes through the gap between the carpet and the front door fades. He’s been careful not to let himself memorize the book, like he’s memorized so many others. He imagines the words are like the ocean, washing over him like a wave, covering him entirely, and then retreating, leaving him alone the shore. Shion has never seen the ocean, and he suspects he never will. The metaphor works either way.

He reads every word of the book, starting with the cover. _The Reader’s Library_ , the cover says. _The Tragedy of_. Then in larger, slanting letters, _Macbeth. By William Shakespeare. Annotated Edition. Edited by Catherine Griffiths. With a new forward by Eric O’Donnell_. He opens the book. There, again, is the title. On the third page there is new information. _First edition published 1981. Winston and West Publishing. London, New York. All rights reserved_. Next there is a Table of Contents, a page of Acknowledgements, a Forward, a Preface, an Introduction. He reads all of this, and pictures what he thinks low tide must be like. As the page numbers transition from _x_ ’s and _i_ ’s to numbers, the tide swells. _Scene 1_ , he reads, and the ocean engulfs him. _Thunder and lightning. Enter three witches._

He stops at midday for a hastily wrapped sandwich and trip to the bathroom, but the rest of the time he sits at the table in the center of the room and reads. His watch reads 8:30 as he reads the final number of the barcode on the back cover (it is _4_ ). He stands, shakes his leg from where it has fallen asleep, and returns the book to its place on the musty shelves. He shrugs into his coat, laces up his sneakers, turns off the light, and leaves the room. He doesn’t lock the door — he can’t think of anyone else who would ever come here. He climbs up the cracked cement stairs and emerges into the night.

Now, for the first time since he arrived here at midnight the day before, Shion hesitates. He’s spent the whole day reading, yes, but he has also spent it waiting. This is the only day he waits, and like every year he’s loath to stop. But waiting only gets you so far. Most days, you have to keep going. Shion turns from the stairs and walks away, and imagines that he’s left his anticipation where it belongs — back in that underground room, with only the books and dust for company.

He walks home under a sky of brilliant stars, skirting the edge of the West Block, whose bazaar never closes and whose lights never go out. He prefers to traverse the silent wasteland the Bureau of Resource Reclamation has not touched yet, where the stretches, dead, to the horizon. The gentle lights of Artemis greet him just beyond the Third Breach, where he waves his pass to the crusty-eyed checkpoint officer before completing the final few blocks between the Wall and home.

The flat above the bakery is dark, and Shion enters through the back door as quietly as he can. He climbs the spiral staircase to his room and collapses into bed, his backpack and clothes a haphazard pile on the floor. His mother is asleep in the room next door, and she doesn’t see him clutch his sheets tightly in both fists, take a deep breath, and wait for the tears to come. Last year they came quickly, and the year before that, and the year before that as well. They flowed hot down his cheeks, searing a path as they went, steam rising from the wet spots where they hit his pillow. This year, nothing comes. It's midnight. The day is over. Another year gone, Shion is twenty-one years old, and for the first time in five years, he isn’t crying. But some things never change, and like every year, he falls asleep to the same mantra.

“Reunion will come,” he whispers, a promise to the silent world. “Reunion will come.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is my first fic, and it's been knocking around in my head for years. I finally have enough written to post a first chapter, so in a fit of pre-finals procrastination, I figured I'd go ahead and upload it. No promises on when the next chapter will be. 
> 
> I'll be completely honest, I haven't planned this fic out, it came to me in a dream five or six years ago, and I'm waiting to see where it takes me. This fic is meant to be canon-compliant, but I haven't read the books in years, so if details escape me, forgive me.
> 
> Also, please note that while the rating may change, I do not plan on including smut in this fic.


	2. One

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Shion awakes on the morning of his twenty-first birthday to a pounding headache and the sensation of something sliding up his left nostril."

Shion awakes on the morning of his twenty-first birthday to a pounding headache and the sensation of something sliding up his left nostril.

“WHAT THE-“ he yelps, scrambling up to a sitting position against the headboard, only to see a little boy with a shock of black hair standing at his bedside, grinning maniacally.

“Shionn, don’t scare me like that,” Shion says, pulling what he realizes is a tuft of grass out of his nose.

“Good morning Shion!” the boy trumpets. He looks very proud of himself. “Mama said I could come wake you up!”

“He did, did he?” Shion mutters, his headache returning full force now that he doesn’t have a plant up his nostril to distract him. “Tell you what, you go back downstairs and tell everyone I’m awake, and I’ll get dressed and then meet you down there, okay?”

“Okay!” Shionn says. He skips back off down the stairs, and Shion falls back into his pillows with a groan. His midnight breakdown seems silly in the light of the morning, and the voices echoing up the stairwell are a reminder that the real world is here in Artemis, not in some crumbly old army barracks. It’s time to get up.

The kitchen is crowded with four people and a dog in it, but two slices of cherry cake and a mug of coffee have done wonders for Shion's headache, and the tight fit around the scrubbed wooden table is cozy. Inukashi sits with Shionn on his knee, trying unsuccessfully to make him stop talking long enough to eat his breakfast. Shion nods along to his monologue, hiding his smile in his coffee cup.

“And then me and Mama went to the grocery store after the other store!” he recounts breathlessly. “We got milk and eggs and dog food and carrots and-“ The chattering stops abruptly as Inukashi jams a spoonful of oatmeal into his mouth mid-sentence.

“There you go, Puppy, eat your food and let someone else talk for a little while,” he says. He looks up from his son as Shion rises to rinse his dishes in the sink.

“Shion! I didn’t say it before, but Happy Birthday! I came around last night to see if you wanted to go out to celebrate, and of course you weren’t here. Jeez, you weren’t with Rikiga or anything, were you?”

“Uh, no,” Shions says, maneuvering around his mother and two trays of sweet buns to sit back down at the table. “I was at the lab until late last night.”

Karan sets her trays of buns on the cooling rack and sits down at Shion’s other side. “Really Shion,” she says, “you spend to much time there!” Looking at Inukashi she says, “He didn’t just come home late last night, he spent the night at the lab the night before that as well! Sometimes I wonder if this job with the Bureau is any less stressful than his committee position was.”

“I’m alright, Mom, I promise. The Committee was definitely worse. And I like what I’m doing now.”

“What’s your job again Shion?” Shionn asks, mouth finally liberated from his mother’s spoon.

“How many times do I gotta tell you, Puppy, your uncle Shion here is a scientist!” Inukashi says, squeezing Shionn around the waist and making him giggle.

“That’s right,” Shion says, heart fond. Last night feels even more distant than it did in bed this morning, watching Inukashi and his son. “I’m learning how to fix the earth outside the Wall so plants can grow.”

“Wow!” Shionn enthuses, before taking a deep breath and saying, “Well, ok. So then we bought pasta and flour and broccoli and…”

“Shionn!” Inukashi grumbles, and Shion laughs. Maybe twenty-one isn't so daunting after all.

***

In the years following the Collapse, NO. 6 changed rapidly. The Restructural Committee facilitated three waves of reconstruction in rapid succession, and when it was formally dissolved with the ratification of the Constitution of the Republic of the People of the City of NO. 6, the newly formed Bureau of Community Development had immediately picked up where the Committee had left off. Five years on, the West Block is barely recognizable — gone are the deteriorating high rises and ramshackle houses; in their place are high density housing projects, hotels, theaters, and music clubs. All that remain of the old Block are the bazaar and the tall black obelisk that stands at its center. Carved into its marble sides are thousands of tiny nicks — one for every person believed lost to the Hunts of the old regime.

Ten minutes walk back through the Third Breach, nestled between the sprawling new suburb of Artemis and the remains of the Wall, lies the campus of the People’s University of Science and Technology. Brand new labs and lecture halls, barely two years old, fan out from the central quad. Shion’s building, like most of those in NO. 6, is a marvel of solar glass and carbon fiber. He scans his ID card at the front desk and rides the elevator three floors up to his lab. Most of the members of his team are already there when he arrives, as well as an email from the Bureau of Resource Reclamation detailing the next stage of their survey.

He’s printed out the day’s sampling requirements and is securing his work belt more firmly around his waist when Dana comes up and claps him on the back.

“Happy birthday, boss!” she says, voice booming. Shion grins, sheepish. He’s long since learned that asking her to call him anything other than “boss” is a lost cause.

“Thanks, Dana,” he says. “How’d it go yesterday?”

“No big problems, but, well…” she trails off.

“What?” Shion asks, slinging his work back over his shoulder and heading for the door with Dana and the rest of the team.

“It’s just, we picked up some more of those trace readings. I don’t know what to make of it, I can’t find anything about it in the database.”

“Again?” Shion wrinkles his brow.

“Yeah. Third time this month. Look, boss, I know what the charter says, but are you sure there isn't some more data we don’t know about? This is NO. 6, for pete’s sake, if any city is gonna have information about unknown soil containments it’s this place.”

“Well, as sure as I can be,” Shion says. “The Committee made it a priority to declassify everything we could get our hands on, but I guess there’s a chance we missed something. Otherwise, maybe we really have discovered something new. Maybe this is good news.”

Dana hmms non-comitantly.

“Well,” she says, “guess we’ll find out.” She moves away to strike up conversation with David, one of the grad students, leaving Shion lost in thought as the team makes their way across campus to the transportation bay. It isn’t until their van clears the Breach and starts out towards their survey sight, a good hour from the Wall, that Shion’s reverie is broken.

It’s probably strange he finds the wasteland beyond NO. 6 and the West Block so beautiful. Here to the west, unlike the carefully cultivated farmland hugging the Wall to the south, the earth is dull and desolate. The horizon is unbroken for miles, except for to the west, where mountains rise, dark and foreboding. Even on clear days the air seems hazy, and everything is unnaturally still. And still, Shion can’t help but feel awe at the vast expanse in front of him. The sky today is a deep blue, and the mountains are capped with snow. Yes, he thinks, this job is infinitely better than the Committee.

They work in groups of three, bent low over the soil. Shion holds the scanner over each sample of dirt he collects, reading out nitrogen levels which Dana scribbles down in a notebook. David bags and labels each sample they collect, and over the course of the day they make their way down one row of the grid they’ve marked off. The work is repetitive, but if feels good to be outside, to laugh and joke with his peers, to actually do what he thought he’d be doing all those years ago, back in the sterile classrooms of the gifted program. His work is anything but sterile now, and he revels in the grit under his fingernails and the sweat on the back of his neck.

Its 4:30 in the afternoon, and the work is winding down, when Shion hears a shout from off to his left.

“Hey, do you guys see that?”

He looks up to see Elijah and another grad student looking off to the south, gesturing at something. He peers in the direction they’re pointing, and sees a cloud of dust rising up off the barren plain.

“What in the-“ Dana says next to him. “Is that a _person_?”

Shion stands up and jogs to the van, trepidation rising in his throat. The headache from this morning is back full force, and his pulse races. Everyone in NO. 6 has grown up with stories of the raiders who live out in the wasteland between the cities. Had he been naive to bring his team so far out beyond the Walls, with no protection to speak of? He doesn’t let himself think of the other possibility. His waiting for the year is over.

He roots around in the back of the van until he finds the small pair of binoculars in the team’s emergency kit. Running over to where Dana now stands next to Elijah, David, and several other team members, he raises the binoculars to his eyes and focuses in on the dust cloud.

“It’s a…motorcycle,” he says, stunned. “It’s someone on a motorcycle, they’re headed this way.”

“What?!” Dana exclaims, making a motion for the binoculars, which Shion hands her. She puts them up to her face and stares for a few moments.

“Well I’ll be damned,” she says. “What do we do, boss?”

Shion sets his jaw. Whoever this person is, they’re probably not savory. Ever since the Collapse, more people than ever before have immigrated to NO. 6, but always by plane. Shion has never heard of someone arriving by overland travel before, and never by themselves.

“I think,” he says, thinking quickly, “that whoever this person is, they’re probably tired and hungry. We shouldn’t assume the worst. But just in case, let’s head back to the van. I’ll talk to whoever this is when they get here.”

As the group hurries to follow his lead, Dana hands the binoculars back to Shion, and he looks through them to the figure again, now getting rapidly closer.

The motorcycle is old and battered, and it sounds likes nothing he’s ever heard before, a growl that carries across the landscape. He wonders if its old enough to be working off a combustion engine. The body of the motorcycle is black, and the rider is in black as well, with a helmet covering their face. Grey hair whips behind them, as well as what appears to be a long grey traveling cloak.

The binoculars slip through his fingers, and Shion dimly registers the dull _whump_ of them hitting the ground. He knows that cloak. But it can’t be.

The motorcycle is almost upon them now, the roar of its engine so loud it blocks out all other sound. It comes to a skidding halt beside the van, where the rest of the group is huddled inside. Shion remains standing where he is, watching as the rider puts their foot down, releases the kickstand, and dismounts.  
It can’t be, Shion thinks. It can’t be.

In the seconds before the rider reaches up to pull off their helmet, he remembers his mantra from the night before, the one he’s allowed to say out loud one night a year, every year, ever since Nezumi walked out of his life and left him at the mercy of the Restructural Committee. Alone. His heads pounds.

_Renunion will come, Shion._

“Reunion will come,” Shion whispers, and his hands curl to fists.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is all I have so far. Tune in maybe sometime late December, after this frankly awful semester is good and gone. Senior year sucks y'all.
> 
> EDIT Jan 15: I spent more time over break working than I did writing. Chapter 2 is in the works, and it'll go up when I finish it. I start school again tomorrow though, so no promises on when that is. But this fic is not abandoned.
> 
> EDIT Feb 6: Very minimal edits made for better readability and to help with some continuity into the next chapter


	3. Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nezumi hadn't expected to find Shion so easily. And he certainly hadn't expected to get punched for it.

Here’s the thing. Nezumi knows he has a flair for the theatrical. He’s an actor; he’s always made his living by playing up the drama. The huge, antiquated motorcycle is a case in point. But he’s not _that_ much of a drama queen. So yes, in hindsight he sees how skidding to a stop in a cloud of dust and making a show of tossing his hair as he removed his helmet was, maybe, a little over the top. But how was he to have known the group of surveyors he'd pulled up to included Shion, of all people? It wasn’t until he’d taken off his helmet that he’d realized the tall, broad-shouldered man even was Shion, and not an athletic 60-year-old. He hadn’t expected to find him so easily. And he certainly hadn’t expected to get punched for it.

Nezumi hisses as his ass bites the dirt. His jaw throbs where Shion decked him, and when he brings a hand up to assess the damage he can feel it swelling under his fingertips. Shion stands over him, grimacing and rubbing his reddening knuckles with his other hand.

“What the fuck, Shion!” Nezumi says, scrambling to his feet. In his peripheral he can see one of the other surveyors climbing out of the van, but he ignores her in favor of looking at Shion, whose face has gone white.

“I was done for the year,” Shion gasps, and then he doubles over and vomits into the dust.

“Shit!” Nezumi yelps, stumbling forward to catch Shion around the shoulders before he can pitch forward into his own sick. “What the hell, Shion!”

Shion sags against him, passed out. Nezumi makes to shake him back awake when the surveyor from before is upon them, bringing her hand down hard on Nezumi’s shoulder, startling him.

“Don’t jolt him!” she says. Her voice is firm and colored with an accent Nezumi can’t place. “Lay him down on the ground, slowly.” She punctuates the last word with a glare in Nezumi’s direction. Together, she and Nezumi get Shion on his back on the ground.

“What’s wrong with him?” he asks, as the woman begins to root around in Shion’s pockets.

“He’ll be fine,” she says, pulling a small container from one of the pockets on Shion’s vest. She opens it to reveal a syringe and a vial of milky fluid. “He must have forgotten to take his medicine this morning.”

Medicine? Nezumi’s mind races, he can’t remember Shion ever needing any kind of medication in the year they spent together.

Shion’s eyes flutter open. Nezumi moves closer without thinking.

“Dana,” Shion mumbles, “what happened?”

“You had an attack, Boss,” the woman (Dana?) says, voice softer now, but still authoritative. “I need you to turn your head so I can give you this shot, alright?”

Shion does as he’s told, turning his head away from her. His eyes land on Nezumi’s again. He gasps, although Nezumi can’t tell if this is because of him, or because Dana has just administered a shot to the back of his neck, right where Nezumi knows a small surgical scar should be.

“Nezumi, you’re here.” He doesn’t look angry anymore, just tired. Nezumi tries for a smile.

“Yeah, I came back.”

Shion reaches out and brushes Nezumi’s hand, and Nezumi laces their fingers together.

Dana looks between the two of them.

“Do you two know each other?” she asks. "Shion?” But Shion’s eyes are closed again, and his chest is rising and falling in a gentle rhythm. Dana levels Nezumi with another glare.

“He’s going to be out for a while," she says. “The medicine I gave him is partly a sedative, and it takes some time to pass completely through his system. Now I don’t know who you are, or where the hell you came from, but if the boss here knows you...” she pauses at this, eyes drifting down to where Nezumi is still holding Shion’s hand, “then I suppose you could follow after us on that whatever-it-is you’re riding and help me get him home.”

Nezumi nods, and exhales in relief. His awareness widens past the little circle where he and Dana kneel over Shion’s prone form. The smell of sick reaches him, and the feeling of a light breeze, and the sound of nervous voices off to his left by the van. All it took was one look at Shion, and the rest of the world disappeared. It doesn’t bode well. He can’t afford to lose his touch.

He meets Dana’s glare with a smile. It’s amiable, friendly, one that’s gotten him out of any number of tight spots before.

“Thank you very much,” he says. “I’d be glad to help you get him home. And...” He pauses. He doesn’t know if he can trust Dana, or frankly anyone from NO. 6 past Shion and his mother. But Shion works with this woman, he obviously trusts her with his medication, and Nezumi would rather not fuck up this reunion anymore than he already has. It’s probably best to get on this woman’s good side, and to stay there.

“I apologize,” he continues, “for the entrance I made. It wasn’t my intention to alarm anyone. I’m grateful you’ll let me stay with him, at least until he gets home.” He lets the smile fade into an earnest, serious expression he used to reserve for dealing with his old West Block theater director. Dana regards him silently for a moment, as though sizing him up, and then nods. Together they manage to get Shion somewhat upright, braced between the two of them.

“Hey David! Come help us carry him!” Dana shouts, and someone around Nezumi’s age with sunburned cheeks jumps from the van and hustles towards them. He takes Shion’s legs, and together the three of them carry Shion, still asleep, towards the van.

_Hang on, Shion_ , Nezumi thinks, as he climbs onto his bike and starts up the engine. _We’re going home._

  
***

Home, similar to Shion’s explosive right hook, isn’t what Nezumi is expecting. It’s not the cramped bakery in Shion’s old neighborhood, it’s not some fancy house in Shion’s even older neighborhood, it’s not even the dilapidated barracks where Nezumi used to live. Instead, Nezumi follows the van for an hour, across the wasteland and past a sweep of brightly lit high-rises, which he realizes with a jolt is the West Block, until they pass through one of the many holes in the old wall. On the other side is what must be a brand-new suburb of modest houses and apartments, all built around what looks like a university. Nezumi doesn’t recognize any of it.

Still, some things never change, and when Karan barrels out the door of a little bakery just off the main square, bursts into tears, and then hustles Nezumi and Dana inside and up the back stairway with her son in tow, Nezumi finally feels like he’s getting the reunion he expected. Karan wants to where he’s been, how long he plans to stay, if he has a place to live, if he’s had anything to eat. He smiles at every question, and she smiles back, and doesn’t ask again.

“You’re so thin!” she tuts instead, and bustles him into her gleaming kitchen. “Here, I’ll make you a sandwich.”

Three sandwiches and what feels like his weight in warm, sweet tea later, Nezumi escapes up the stairs with the excuse he’ll watch Shion until he wakes up. Dana had been sitting across from him at the scrubbed kitchen table, arms crossed, eyebrows creased, and the combination of both women’s attention on him had made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. The relative quiet of the upstairs hallway is a relief. He leans against the wall and closes his eyes. He’s tired.

There’s a bathroom halfway down the hall, and he takes advantage of it, washing the grime of the day’s travel off his face and from underneath his nails. When he emerges, he turns towards Shion’s room, figuring he might as well make good on his promise to watch him, when he hears Dana’s voice from downstairs.

“-third attack in as many months, Karan. You can’t convince him to see a doctor?”

“You know as well as I do how stubborn my son is. I think the only person he ever really listened to was Nezumi.”

Nezumi tenses, and quiets his breathing, listening harder.

“Karan, excuse me, but who exactly is this kid? He pulled up out of nowhere on that motorcycle and just happened to know who your son was.”

“Nezumi,” Karan says, and Nezumi holds his breath, “is a friend, from when Shion was a boy. He did Shion and I a great kindness several years ago, before the Collapse, and he’s been traveling ever since. There’s no need to worry about him, Dana, I trust him with Shion."

"You know the first thing Shion did when he saw him was punch him,” Dana says, and Nezumi can hear the resentment in her voice.

“Really?” Karan’s laughter floats up the stairwell. It’s warm, like the tea Nezumi drank. “Well, Inukashi told me they fought sometimes, though I never saw it.”

“So he knows that troublemaker too, huh?” Dana asks, and the moment is past. Nezumi let’s out his breath, and for the first time that day, the smile on his lips is genuine.

Shion is still fast asleep when Nezumi enters the little bedroom. He stirs a little as Nezumi sits down at the desk under the window, turning over on the bed so he lays on his side, hands tucked under his cheek. His chest rises and falls in even intervals, and despite the fact his scar is still flushed an ugly maroon, the color in his face is back. His hair shines in the sunset that trickles past the curtains. It’s shorter now, cut back behind his ears, revealing a jawline flecked with pale stubble. He’s taller, less bony, and his nose and cheeks are freckled with sun spots. Nezumi wonders idly if he’s still the taller of the two.

He sits there with Shion for an hour. He hears Dana leave about fifteen minutes into his vigil, and he passes the remaining time trying to decipher Shion’s handwriting on the papers scattered about on the desk. From what he can tell, it’s about soil composites.

The room is dark, and stars are starting to appear in the sky outside, when he hears a new commotion from downstairs. A dog barks, someone laughs, and then comes the sound of a door opening, and of feet running up the stairs. Someone shouts, “Shionn! Get back here!” and then the door to the bedroom is thrown open to reveal a kid in a muddy school uniform with grass stains on both knees. The kid looks from Shion, still unconscious on the bed, to Nezumi, who’s on his feet in a fighting stance, and frowns.

“Who’re you?” the kid asks, loudly.

Nezumi surprises himself by replying.

“I’m Nezumi,” he says. “Keep it down, kid, my friend’s asleep here.” He jerks his head at Shion, and the kid’s eyes go wide. He opens his mouth to say something else when Inukashi sweeps into the room, picks him up, and claps a hand over his mouth.

“Shionn!” Inukashi whispers, “What did Mama say about bothering Uncle Shion when he’s sick!” The kid, unable to get his mouth free, points in Nezumi’s direction. Inukashi looks up.

“Holy shit,” he says. “It’s really you.”

He’s cleaner than Nezumi has ever seen him, in loose jeans and a halter top, and his hair is in a braid down his back. He looks healthy, and well-adjusted. He sets the kid down and murmurs something in his ear. The kid nods, expression serious, and zooms out of the room.

“You have a kid,” Nezumi says intelligently.

Inukashi barks out a laugh. “You’re telling me, rat brain! Thank your boyfriend, he’s the one who found Shionn for me in the first place.” He looks over at Shion and his expression sobers. Nezumi, in contrast, feels bowled over. Already today he’s been punched by the one person he thought might be happy to see him again, and now to top it all off, the one person he thought incapable of looking after another human being, on account of them _literally being raised by dogs_ , is a mother. Nezumi quietly vows never to trust his own expectations ever again.

“Shion’s mama told me he had another attack, said you brought him in from outside the city,” Inukashi is saying, and Nezumi forces himself back to the conversation.

“I did,” he says. "What’s wrong with him, Inukashi?”

“Hell if I know, he won’t tell us anything.”

“There’s nothing wrong with me,” comes another voice, quiet and firm. It’s Shion, finally awake. Nezumi and Inukashi look towards the bed. Shion’s sitting up, rubbing his head and grimacing.

“Shion-” Inukashi starts, but Shion holds up a hand.

“Nezumi,” he says, looking at the wall, “I need you to leave."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally, an update! No apologies though, I didn't give an update schedule for a reason. This particular chapter got held up by work, and then school, and then a cold. I don't really have a plan for chapter three, so we'll see what we shall see, I suppose. Until then, comments are greatly appreciated. Cheers.


	4. Three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "So we’re just telling people they can sleep in bunkers, now, are we?”  
> “It’s a nice bunker!”

He’s _here_. Nezumi is _here_. Shion’s vision blurs. He’s angry, he’s _furious_. How dare Nezumi be here? He’s five years late, and riding a _motorcycle_. A motorcycle with a fucking _combustion engine_.   _Asshole_ , Shion thinks, and his fist connects with Nezumi’s cheek. It feels good to hit something, but now his knuckles hurt. His head hurts too. Nezumi is shouting something, but Shion can’t hear him past the rushing in his ears. He doesn’t want to hear what Nezumi has to say, anyway.

“I was done for the year,” he says, mostly to himself, and then he’s doubled over, violently sick. An attack, he realizes. He sees his medicine in his mind's eye, sitting forgotten on his bedside table. He blinks, and he’s on his back. Dana’s face swims above his. 

“Dana,” he says, and his lips feel heavy. “What happened?”

“You had an attack, Boss,” Dana’s voice says from far away. Shion knows he had an attack. He’s asking why he’s on his back. “I need you to turn your head so I can give you this shot, alright?”

Shion complies, rolling his head to the side, and Nezumi’s face comes into view. A pinprick of pain on his neck makes him gasp. Nezumi is still there when the pain recedes.

“Nezumi, you’re here.” _Why are you still here? I don’t want you here._

He reaches out a hand to push Nezumi away, but the world is quickly receding. At least his headache is gone now. He feels someone take his hand. _That’s nice_ , he thinks, and then everything is dark.

***

“You have a kid.”

“You’re telling me rat brain! Thank your boyfriend, he’s the one who found Shionn for me in the first place.”

Shion opens his eyes. Above him, a ceiling, not a sky. Below him, a mattress, not a wasteland. He’s at home, in bed. 

“Shion’s mama told me he had another attack, said you brought him in from outside the city.” 

He turns his head. Inukashi is standing by the door, talking to someone across the room.

“I did. What’s wrong with him, Inukashi?” It’s Nezumi. He’s still here. He can’t be angry about it right now, though, he’s too tired. Later, he’ll be angry. Right now, he needs Nezumi out of his bedroom.

“Hell if I know, he won’t tell us anything.”

“There’s nothing wrong with me,” Shion says, sitting up too fast. His head twinges, and he puts a hand to his forehead.

“Shion—” Inukashi says, but Shion holds up his hand. He can feel Nezumi on his other side, staring at him. He looks pointedly at his bedspread.

“Nezumi,” he says, “I need you to leave."

There’s a moment of silence, really more a collective holding of breath, and then:

“Yeah,” Nezumi says. “Yeah, I’ll go.” 

He’s almost out the door when Shion remembers.

“The bunker,” he says, not raising his head. “It’s still there. If you need a place to sleep.” 

There’s no response, and when Shion lifts his head up a few seconds later, Nezumi is gone. Inukashi stands there for a second, looking between Shion and the open door, and then he mutters, “Shit,” and runs out of the room.

Shion leans all the way forward, so that his face is pressed into blankets covering his legs, and groans. The back of his neck aches. The skin around his scar feels tight, and he has to take several deep breaths to dispel the sensation that he’s being choked. He feels wrung out, and emotionless. He knows later he’s going to be angry, and probably really sad, and just the prospect of that leaves him exhausted. He straightens up, crawls back under the covers, and tries to sleep.

***

Everything hurts. His arms, his legs, his head. He groans. His voice is muffled, his face tucked into the dip where Nezumi’s shoulder meets his neck. An arm comes up to encircle him, hand splayed wide on his back. Shion breathes deeply, and the smell of coffee surrounds him, and steam rises from the mug in front of him, pushing away the last vestiges of pain and tiredness. Here, Nezumi says, smiling, drink up, its just the way you like it. He drinks, and everything feels warm. He snuggles deeper into Nezumi’s embrace, and wills the world to fall away. The sky is so blue above him, but the room he stands in is dark, and if he squints, he can see Yoming far out ahead of him, marching away with his head held high. Shion turns back to Nezumi so he can ask for another mug of coffee, and maybe some of his mother’s rolls, but instead Torey stands there, pressing the paging button on the intercom system, over and over. There’s a meeting, Member Shion, Torey says. Conference Room 3. No! Shion tries to say, I won’t go, I quit! But he can’t get the words out. Instead he coughs, and opens his eyes. His bedroom is empty, and the clock on his desk tells him he has a few hours yet until dawn. He rolls over and pulls the covers over his head, and this time, he doesn’t dream.

***

Dana is not happy to see him when he walks into the lab the next morning. 

“You had an attack yesterday!” she says, hands thrown up in the air, following him around as he runs through his weekly equipment inspection. “You threw up, and then you tried pretty hard to land face-first right where you threw up!” 

“Dana, I promise, I’m fine,” he says, setting down his clipboard so he can check each of the field kits for a pH meter. 

“You passed out! We had to bodily carry you up the stairs to your room!”

“And thanks to that, I got plenty of rest, and now I’m fine.” He checks _pH meters_  off on his checklist and starts zipping each of the kit bags closed.

"We were all worried sick! I had to practically throw David out of the van when we dropped everyone off at the lab!”

“I’m grateful for your, and David’s, concern, but I’m alright now.” Satisfied with the field kits, he kneels down to look at the mini centrifuges on the shelf below. 

“Shion, Boss, I’m begging you, don’t come out with us to the new site today.”

“Wasn’t planning on it,” Shion says, and looks up at Dana. She’s frozen mid-tirade, hands held out in front of her in an imploring gesture. 

“Oh,” she says, after a moment. “Great, well, I’ll brief the team when they get here.”

“Thanks,” Shion says, and, happy with the state of the centrifuges, stands back up.

“What will you be doing instead?” Dana asks. Her lecture over, she apparently no longer feels the need to follow him around, and she leans against one of the high lab tables. Shion crosses the room and hangs the completed checklist on its hook by the door.

“There’s been some paperwork piling up,” he says. “I need to finish looking over some applications for the internship next semester, stuff like that. And I thought I’d take another look into those anomalies we keep seeing.”

Dana pushes up from the table.

“Really?” she says. 

“Yeah,” Shion replies, and frowns. “It bothers me that there’s nothing in the database about them. You were right yesterday when you said that if any city was going to have records of rare soil contaminants it’d be here. I figured I’d run the data through some pattern recognition software and see what came up.”

“Sounds like a good plan, Boss,” Dana says. She walks over to him gives him a pat on the shoulder. “And thanks for staying in today. If you really say you’re fine, I believe you, but it’s always scary seeing you have an attack.”

“Thanks, Dana,” he says, and smiles. Dana leaves the lab in pursuit of coffee, and Shion sighs. Dana is normally a comforting presence, but right now he wants to be alone. Equipment checks done, he takes refuge in his office and closes the door. 

The entire morning had been a mess. He woke up still wearing his clothes from the day before, head filled with half-remembered dreams, and still he’d managed to forget about his disaster of a birthday until he collapsed into a chair in the kitchen, looked up, and been met with his mother looking about as mad as he’d ever seen her.

“Mom, don’t start,” he said.

“So we’re just telling people they can sleep in bunkers, now, are we?”

“It’s a nice bunker!”

“That boy brought you back to me when I thought I’d lost you, he brought you back to me again yesterday, and you told him he could go sleep in a bunker—”

“Yeah, well, he should have—” 

“He should have _what_ , Shion?”

“He should have come back sooner.”

He’d left the house pretty quickly after that. 

Walking to work had been torture. He felt 17 again, seeing Nezumi in every gray shawl, every pair of work boots, every book store. The overcast sky was the color of Nezumi eyes, the teenager walking to school had Nezumi’s old haircut. He nearly lost it when he walked by the brand new community theatre to see that they’d announced their inaugural production: Macbeth. By the time he made it to the lab he’d been about ready to claw his own hair out. And then Dana had slammed an energy drink down in front of him, told him to replenish his electrolytes, and then started in on her lecture. 

Now, sitting at his desk, he brings up the data from their past surveys and tries to put it all out of his head. The unidentifiable contaminants had shown up in three of their survey locations so far, none of them near each other. He brings up a satellite image overlayed with their past survey sites, and marks each of the locations where the contaminants had been found. Then he tabs over to the rest of the data his team had collected, and begins prepping it so he can run it through the lab’s suite of pattern recognition softwares. The dialogue box tells him it will be a few minutes before all the data can be sorted through, so he switches screens to start going through his emails. There’s an important looking message from the department head about next week’s budget meeting, plus several unread internship applications. He clicks on one. Out in the lab, he can hear his team members beginning to congregate before they head off of the transportation bay. He hears Dana laughing, back from her coffee run. 

Dana, for reasons he doesn’t quite understand but is grateful for, hasn’t mentioned Nezumi yet this morning. He knows they must have talked, at least enough to coordinate getting him from the survey site back to his house, and he wonders why she hasn’t brought him up. Well, it’s not like Shion himself ever mentioned him.  _Hey, by the way Dana, the only boy I ever loved left me for a road trip of self-discovery, and I wouldn’t be angry about it except it’s been five years and he hasn’t come back yet._

The dialogue box pops back to the front of his screen with a soft chime. Shion shakes his head to clear it and hits the return key to bring to up the results. There’s a long list of possible patterns, followed by a summary from the computer’s expert analysis system. He scrolls down to read it, and then scrambles out of his chair and sticks his head out his office door.

“Hey Dana! Come look at this!”

Five minutes later, he’s addressing his team in their morning brief before they head off for their newest survey site. He has the software results up on the projector.

“The expert system thinks that the sites where the anomalies were recorded may all be parts of an old, dried-up stream bed that’s been weathered down over a number of years to be flush with the rest of the landscape. Extrapolating outwards,” and Shion brings up the satellite map, “it looks like today’s site might be part of the same stream bed. So I’ve added a few new tests that need to be done with the samples you all take, so that we can be sure. And I know it’s a hassle, but over the next few site visits we’re going to have to go back and run those same tests at the other three sites. Not today though.”

“Any clues about what the contaminants might be?” Mimi, their youngest researcher, asks. She had just completed her primary education in the gifted program when the Collapse came. The team had celebrated her 15th birthday three weeks ago.

“Not yet,” Dana says from where she stands next to Shion. “But we’re going to start doing more specific tests here in the lab, maybe bring in some people from water sciences to see what they think.”

Shion watches his colleagues as they file out of the lab in a bittersweet mood. It’s the first real breakthrough they’ve had in months of surveying, and while he’s happy for the team, he wishes he could go with them. Not today though. Shion might be stubborn, but he’s not stupid. He trudges back to his desk and his emails. 

In the last fifteen minutes a new message has appeared. It’s official-looking, and flagged as high priority. He opens it. 

> _Citizen_ Shion,
> 
> _Your presence has been requested at a citizenship application hearing on behalf of West Block Refugee_ Nezumi _, to take place_ **Thursday, September 8**   _at_ **16:00**   _at the offices of the Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration on level 4 of City Hall_. _You have been requested to attend because the applicant has listed you as a witness who can attest to their residence in the West Block prior to February 2, 2018.The applicant has listed_ 2 _other witnesses to their residency. Applicants for citizenship based on prior residency must be able to provide testimony by at least three witnesses. If you are unable or unwilling to testify on the applicant’s behalf, their application for citizenship will be denied and a new hearing will be scheduled at such a time when the applicant can successfully provide at least three witnesses. Please follow the instructions on the attached form to confirm whether or not you are willing and able to attend this hearing._
> 
> _Sincerely,_
> 
> _Citizen Maple_
> 
> _Assistant Secretary to the Director of Refugee Admissions_
> 
> _Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration_
> 
> _Republic of the People of the City of NO. 6_

_Well_ , Shion thinks, leaning back in his chair. He glances at the clock in the right-hand corner of his screen. He has roughly eight hours before he has to represent his ex-boyfriend in court. _Shit._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Somehow I've managed to post two updates in one month, so maybe I'm not completely useless at this writing thing. The next chapter is very roughly planned out, although I'm not sure when I'll get around to writing it, so please be patient. Graduation approaches, and my first priority is finishing my undergrad and then getting my ass back to the PNW. So if nothing happens between now and May, that is why.  
> A note about dates: the exact time of year when Shion and Nezumi bring down NO. 6 is never explicitly stated, except that it's "spring", or at least the end of winter. I have made the executive decision that in this story at least, it happens on February 2, 2018. February 2nd is the traditional Japanese date for the first day of Spring (never mind the fact that in this fic NO. 6 is based loosely on some kind of post-apocalyptic Denver). This story's prologue opens the morning of September 7th, 2022. Years do come from canon, although in my headcanon at least the entire story takes place far in our own future, not in some grim parallel timeline.  
> In a similar vein, I draw mostly from the novels, so if you were confused by the dream sequence, I recommend reading "Shion's Days" from NO. 6 Beyond, which has been beautifully translated by the blogger Nostalgia on 9th Ave.


	5. Four

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Shion,” Nezumi says past the lump in his throat. _Don’t fuck it up, don’t fuck it up._ “You teach?”

The offices of the Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration are ridiculously plush. Armchairs line the walls, plants frame the huge glass window, and there's an honest-to-goodness fountain tinkling away in the middle of the space. Everything is in agreeable shades of blue and cream. It makes Nezumi want to tear his hair out. The Restructural Committee, even as it turned the old system of governance on its head, simply moved into the pre-existing buildings, luxury furniture and all. Sitting in the lobby outside the Bureau’s small courtroom, with its sweeping 12th floor views of the Central District’s canals and shops, it’s easy to forget that anything has changed. Nezumi finds himself scanning the room for cameras, mics, blind spots, escape routes.

Next to him, Inukashi sighs languidly. He’s sunk into one of the velvet armchairs until he’s practically enveloped in it.

“God I’ve missed these things,” he groans. “Been looking for an excuse to get back to City Hall, I swear I dream about these chairs.”

“Don’t get too comfortable,” Nezumi says, irritated.

“Calm down, rat boy, no one’s gonna shoot you here,” Inukashi says, and Nezumi glares at him. Still, he forces himself to relax his stance and lean against the wall beside Inukashi’s chair. Someone in an official-looking suit and a nametag enters the lobby and Nezumi tenses.

He hates this. Before, when NO 6 was still his enemy, he knew what to look for, how to distinguish ally from foe. He’d known during his travels too - how to sleep with one eye open against unwelcome nighttime visitors to his camp, how to guard against muggers and pickpockets in the slums of NO 4. Now he doesn’t know who the enemy is. It makes him antsy.

“I get it,” Inukashi says, breaking the tense silence. “I was jumpy as hell at my hearing, what with everything all fancy and clean.”

“I don’t,” Nezumi hesitates, searching for the right word. “I don’t trust this.” He sweep his arm to indicate the lobby and the view outside.

“Yeah, me neither, buddy, but at least my hotel has central heating now.”

 _Fair enough_ , Nezumi thinks, and tries to settle in against the wall to wait.

***

Nezumi slept in the bunker last night. After Shion had told him in no uncertain terms to get out of his house, he’d left as fast as he could. Karan stopped him in the kitchen, asking if he had a place to stay.

“The bunker,” he’d replied, and fled. He sped through the streets of Artemis, dry wind whipping past him on his motorcycle. How stupid! He’d fucked everything up, riding in guns blazing, whipping his hair back like a loser, surprising Shion so bad he threw up. He would make it up, Nezumi vowed, flying past the university campus and towards the gap in the wall. The next time he saw Shion, he wouldn’t fuck it up.

The bunker was cold and dark when he reached it. Nezumi was surprised when the light over the sink turned on as he flipped the switch, naked bulb casting the room in a pallid glow. He’d expected the space to be covered in dust, but looking closely, he saw the room showed signs of a recent occupant. There was a lingering dampness in the sink, and the bed and table were free of dust. Shion, he supposed, passing through to read.

An hour later, after Nezumi had settled in and switched on the heat (another surprise to find the old junker of a boiler still worked), there was a knock on the door.

“Open up, Nezumi, I know you’re there!”

“Mama, you said we have to be nice when we knock on doors.”

“This here is an exception Shionn, you’ll get it when you’re older.”

Nezumi opened the door to see Inukashi and his kid, Inukashi laden down with several heavy looking bags.

“You and Shion are such drama queens!” Inukashi said instead of a greeting, and pushed past Nezumi into the bunker, dumping his bags onto the table.

“Inukashi, why-" Nezumi started, but Inukashi was already talking again.

“Honestly, you’re both so dramatic it makes me want to puke. Leave some theatrics for the rest of us! Anyway, I’ve brought the basics - rice, broth, some canned vegetables, meat, some of Karan’s rolls.” He punctuated each item on the list by pulling it out a bag. “And here,” he said, pulling out a cheap tablet and shoving it at Nezumi. “Dropped by the refugee center and got that for you. You can use that to access food credits and other stuff. Your citizenship hearing is tomorrow, and your witnesses are me, Shion of course, and then ugh, gag me, Rikiga. Dude’s still a total nightmare, but he knows who you are and the hearing’ll last ten minutes tops.” He stopped then, looking at Nezumi, waiting for a response.

“Why are you here?” Nezumi asked.

Inukashi gave him a very unimpressed look, one that convinced Nezumi, more than the kid clutched to his leg, that Inukashi was a mother.

“Because both you and Shion are idiots, and someone has to be the adult around here,” Inukashi said. “Also, Karan asked me to come. The food is from her.” He pointed at the tablet in Nezumi’s hand. “Citizenship hearing. 4 o’clock. Be there or be square.” And then he was out the door, and the bunker was silent again.

Nezumi put away the food, spent twenty minutes figuring out how the tablet worked, and whether or not it had surveillance software installed (it didn’t, as far as he could tell), and then went to bed.

Inukashi came back in the morning, apparently once again on instructions from Karan, and dragged Nezumi through a whirlwind tour of the West Block, Artemis, and the Central District of NO. 6. Nezumi let himself be dragged. He’d gotten used to people again during his time in the other cities, and the long journey back, over an ocean and halfway across a continent, had been a solitary one.

NO. 6 was somehow entirely different, and entirely the same. Nezumi could still see the wall no matter which direction he looked, only now there were huge crumbled sections, called Breaches, that broke the monotony of carbon reinforced cement. The old neighborhoods were still there, Chronos and Lost Town both, and even the new ones like Artemis were constructed with the same architecture and materials. The only thing that was almost unrecognizable was the West Block, which glittered with high rises and imitation-neon signs. Nezumi never pegged himself as the nostalgic type, but walking through the Block’s clean streets and glass shopfronts, he felt a pang of loss for the place it used to be.

The emotion died in his throat when he and Inukashi walked past a black obelisk standing in the center of the Bazaar. Nezumi didn’t need to ask what it was for. He knew.

***

It’s five minutes to four, and Inukashi has fallen asleep in his chair. Nezumi watches him sleep to avoid triple checking the overhead lights for hidden listening devices. Then he hears a familiar voice, and turns to the entrance of the lobby in time to see Rikiga stride through, with Shion in tow.

Nezumi’s gut clenches. He cannot fuck this up.

“Nezumi, my boy, how are you?” Rikiga booms into the quiet lobby. He slaps Nezumi on the shoulder, and Nezumi valiantly suppresses the urge to suplex him. “Between you and me I’d have thought you’d come back sooner! Or die! Still, good to see you, good to see you!”

“Yeah, old man. Can’t say I share the sentiment,” Nezumi says through clenched teeth. “You still pimping out homeless girls to politicians?"

“Always the joker!” Rikiga says loudly. He laughs nervously. “No, no, I’m a new man!”

“Right,” Nezumi says, and looks around Rikiga to look at Shion. He’s in a similar outfit to yesterday - tan work pants and sturdy boots, and on top a light blue button-down. He doesn’t have on yesterday’s beige work vest, but he does have a name tag clipped to his front pocket, identifying him as a faculty member of the Environmental Soil Sciences department at the People’s University of Science and Technology. He looks professional, academic. Like he belongs here.

“Shion,” Nezumi says past the lump in his throat. _Don’t fuck it up, don’t fuck it up._ “You teach?”

Shion blinks, then looks down at his badge.

“Oh,” he says, “not really. I work for the University, but I lead a team of soil analysts for a survey run jointly by it and the Bureau of Resource Reclamation. I’ve got interns and post-grads on my team, but I don’t actually give lectures.” Shion stops, and Nezumi sees his throat bob, as though Shion is swallowing down more words.

“It suits you,” Nezumi says without really thinking about it.

“What?” Shion asks, but before Nezumi can respond with something else completely inane, the double doors at the far end of the room open, and a woman steps out into the lobby. She has a cloud a black hair framing her face, flecked through with gray, and smart suit in a dark blue color that matches Inukashi's armchair.

“Nezumi?” she asks, and Nezumi steps forward.

“Yeah, about that,” he says. “Someone else filed my hearing request on my behalf. I go by Nezumi, but my name is Eve. Is it too late to change that on my file?”

“Not at all,” the woman says crisply. “It’s actually quite common at these hearings.” She approaches Nezumi and extends her hand. He takes it, ignoring the muttering going on behind him, and she gives him a firm, quick shake. “My name is Citizen Maple, and I will be presiding over your hearing. Are these your witnesses?” She gestures at Shion, Rikiga, and Inukashi.

“They are,” Nezumi confirms.

“Excellent,” Maple says. “Follow me.” She turns and walks back through the double doors into the courtroom, and Nezumi follows her.

The courtroom is large and ornate, but Nezumi barely gets to look at it before Maple is leading them through another, smaller door behind the bench and into a cluttered office.

“Please, sit,” she says, indicating several arm chairs that sit before a large wooden desk. Nezumi sits and the rest follow suit. Maple goes to sit behind the desk, where she begins tapping at a tablet that stands next to a stack of books and paper.

“Woah, rat boy, have you already broken the law?” Inukashi asks. “This is _not_ how my hearing went.”

“Not unless you broke it with me,” Nezumi says. “It’s not like you’ve given me a moment’s peace since I’ve been here.”

“No one’s in trouble here,” Maple says. “But refugee hearings are far less common nowadays, so we really don’t have much use for the courtroom. All I really need,” and here she passes the tablet she had been tapping at over to Nezumi, “is a signature from you attesting that you were a resident of the West Block before the second of February, 2018, and then signatures from each of your witnesses attesting the same. If you’ll look, you’ll see I’ve changed your name to reflect you earlier request.”

“So you were really Eve all along!” Rikiga says. “And here I thought it was a stage name!”

“Don’t worry,” Inukashi says, smirking. “You’ll always be rat boy to me.”

Nezumi ignores them and scans the document on the tablet. It looks standard enough, and similar to the one he signed in NO. 5 when he applied for temporary asylum. All he has to do is agree to follow the laws of NO. 6, and he’ll be given citizenship, a basic income, and a guarantee to his basic human rights.

“Hey Shion, you helped write this, yeah?” Nezumi asks, waving the tablet in front of him.

The expression that skips across Shion’s face is so fast that if Nezumi wasn’t so quick on his own feet he’d have sworn he imagined it. Shion's eyes flash to Maple and his jaw tightens - an expression of guilt. But it’s gone in an instant, replaced again by calm and composure.

“In a sense,” Shion says. “It wasn’t my committee, but I read and approved the language, just like everyone else.”

“So you trust this?”

This time Shion’s expression does not waver.

“Yes,” he says, looking Nezumi in the eye. “I do.”

 _Well alright then_ , Nezumi thinks. Out loud he says, “Then what are we waiting for? Let’s get this over with,” and presses his thumb to the glowing square at the bottom of the document. He passes it to Inukashi who does the same. The tablet goes around the room and then back to Maple, who assesses the four glowing thumbprints.

“Everything seems to be in order,” she says, and presses her own thumb down, finalizing the document. She looks up at Nezumi and smiles. “Welcome back, Citizen Eve, to NO. 6.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I know the notes at the end of last chapter said an update in May, and it's now January. But that's life, you know? That said, I'm really happy I'm finally settled enough that I can keep writing this fic. If any of you readers actually waited around an entire year to read this update, then thank you!


End file.
